LOST IN THE COSMOS. Finding out about our planet -- Recipe for an explosion -- The Big Bang and what came next -- How DID you get here?? -- Cosmic radiation and you -- How far to the edge of the universe? -- Our vast solar system -- Looking for Pluto, the new dwarf planet -- Voyager expeditions -- Who's out there? Advanced life elsewhere in the cosmos? -- Reverend Bob Evans: the supernova searcher -- THE SIZE OF THE EARTH. Newton and gravity -- Measuring the earth and finding its circumference -- Earth's bulge: our planet is not a sphere -- Tracking Venus -- Weighing earth: gravity and Shiehallion -- Cavendish's calculations -- Finding earth's age: the new science of geology -- The stone-breakers: the Geological Society -- Lyell and tectonic plates -- Finding fossils: mapping Britain's rock layers -- Dating rocks: geological eras -- Tooth & clay: digging up strange bones -- Dinosaur hunters: "terrible lizards" -- Bones and earth's age -- Dalton weighs atoms -- Chemistry: adding to the elements -- The periodic table: Mendeleyev instills some order -- Marie Curie and deadly radiation -- A NEW AGE DAWNS. Einstein's theory of relativity -- Spacetime: time has a shape -- The Hubble space telescope -- Lead and CFCs -- Measuring meteorites -- DANGEROUS PLANET. Trilobites: Pangaea and the fossil record -- Crust crunching: the discovery of tectonic plates -- Where does all the sediment go? -- The fire below: the earth beneath our feet -- Mount S. Helens erupts -- Yellowstone Park: a volcano in waiting -- Measuring earthquakes -- Meteors and the KT extinction -- Asteroid hit: rocky objects heading for us? -- LIFE ITSELF. Our tiny patch: a comfortable place to be -- Earth's blanket: the atmosphere that protects us -- Wild and windy: earth's weather -- Hot-water bottle: the effect of the oceans -- Awash with water: a watery planet -- Down in the deep: living on the ocean floor -- Protein soup: oceans, where life started -- Battling bacteria: the coming of microbes -- The bacteria that feed on us -- Making you ill: infectious organisms -- You and your cells -- Adapt or die -- A runaway success: trilobites and other fossils -- Time to get started: earth's long pre-human history -- Out of the sea: when creatures took to the land -- Where did we come from? From reptiles to mammals -- Comings and goings: the great extinctions -- Labeling life: the classification of plants and animals -- Earth's unknown creatures -- Darwin on the Origin of species -- The quiet monk: Mendel and the study of genes -- One big happy family: inheritance and chromosomes -- Crick, Watson, and DNA -- THE ROAD TO US. Hot and cold: ice sheets and climate -- Living in an ice age -- Discovering early human remains -- Lucy: the most famous australopithecine -- From there to here: the rise of Homo sapiens -- Tool-makers: inventors of the first technology -- Humans take over: extermination and extinction -- What now? A polluted planet -- Goodbye: our planet and us